This Sunday I was looking at an activation on The Cowal Peninsula but didn’t have the time for the drive/climb/activate/descend/return. So as it was sunny but windy I applied my not-going-somewhere-special-so-activate-Scald-Law.
Anyway, it came to pass a lady on the descent asked if I was camping. “No,” I said, “the bag is full of radio transmitters, aerials and batteries”. She couldn’t understand why anyone’s hobby would involve radio but seemed to get it when I said “Ham radio, it’s like CB but no swearing.” At this point my heart dropped because I knew what was not in the bag was a battery; it had been recharged. I remembered this because as I was packing after swapping out uWave stuff for HF stuff and the dog walked up and was sat looking expectant. She’s had an operation and is confined to barracks for another week as the wound heals. I explained at length she couldn’t come out and she looked back with puppy eyes. I was trixie and suggested to her she go and check with my XYL for cheese in kitchen. She raced off and I was punished by not putting the fresh battery in the bag. Damn! Dog owners will understand conversations with a dog and a dog’s love of cheese.
Now some years back I wrote about “dogging” for discarded vapes and collecting the batteries. (A follow up to Dogging, Wombling and Free batteries) I made a backup battery out of 6x 500mAh cells to make 3S2P battery. It weighs about 85g, same as 2x KitKat! I made it as I would be horrified to drive/climb some distance and have the battery fail or be missing and so this lightweight battery could always be carried for those just-in-case times.
At the summit, I decided that as I was using the emergency battery then I used the backup antenna, a 41ft random wire that is always carried to verify the backup station. 41ft rigged with 4m vertical and the rest sloping down to 1m off the ground. KX2 set to 5W to give the 1000mAhr battery a fighting chance. It all worked quite well with CW QSOs on 15/17/20/30m and I was 1 QSO in to 20m SSB when the KX2 switched off. The emergency battery powered the KX2 at 5W for about 55mins, probably 35% TX/RX ratio. I’d have thought it would do 90mins but it hasn’t been charged since October 2024 when it was built!
It’s purpose is to enable enough operation to activate a summit and it did with me having 17QSOs in that period. I charged it and discharged it back home and it seems to only have 600mAh capacity. But 55mins will do.
Again I was heard in Dushanbe, Tajikistan by EY8XE. The signal reached some interesting places for an antenna made from scraps of wire, the radio set to half-power powered by junk collected out walking the dog.
Emergency battery recharged and placed in the bag. Normal battery placed back in the bag. Let’s see what I forget next time!
Nice recovery! Nothing is ever allowed to leave my KX-2 kit bag, except to be charged or repaired (like my 41’ wire) and it is immediately replaced.
It contains, radio with battery, spare battery, 41’ EFRW antenna & 9:1 unun, 2 x mic. headphones, velcro straps, mast ring and three guys, 5 pegs, small all weather pad and a pencil, and finally a BNC to banana plug adaptor.
Well recovered. It wouldn’t be a SOTA outing without forgetting something (at least in my humble experience). When I saw you in Scotland recently I’d forgotten my notebooks (yes, I normally carry 2; 1 right in the rain and 1 cheap pad for dry days).
I’ve got sloppy and complacent with age. I used to rib Tom M1EYP about things like this and now it’s biting me back. That’s the issue, not recharging, replacing, fixing the same day of the walk. Having got away with the battery, I fixed the iffy PalmPaddle cable the same evening. It was a cable I had made and the ground connection was intermittent. Cleaned up and re-soldered. Also the battery was given a few charge / discharge cycles, now I can pull 500mA for 70min continuous, the battery charger says about 700mA capacity.
After charging the emergency battery I had a small “white smoke” issue and now there’s a BMS in situ to prevent any more “white smoke”.
One thing I learned about electronics is that you have to keep the magic smoke inside the little black packages, once you let it out most of them don’t work anymore !
If you look carefully, as I did after the smoke issue, you can see a tiny bit of plastic is missing so both centre positive and outer negative are exposed. We know what can happen next don’t we children? Yes the charged pack was disconnected from the charger and placed on the shack bench where junk on the bench shorted them out. I wouldn’t believe it could happen till the PVC wire got hot enough to start to melt and emit smoke and nasty smells. Pulled away and apart from missing insulation where it melted no damage, squeaky bottom issues excepted.
Hence BMS and some homebrew double-insulation work.
How me and Mrs. LLD laughed when I explained why there was a burning smell!
Scariest moment I had was smelling that smoke 4 hours into an 8 hour trans-oceanic overnight flight on a BA 747.
I was in the middle of the plane and (knowing we were some way from land), stuck my (very pale) face round the curtain in the centre galley to alert the crew that I could smell burning insulation. The crew laughed and then pointed to a toaster where the plastic handle of a knife had melted on top of it, I still didn’t find it that funny for some reason.
I fell in the Tail Burn when I first did White Coomb. Mrs. LLD thought it was quite funny as I was standing still on a rock part way across then without moving my feet I was horizontal in the water.
Bummer about the pole.
I recently read somewhere that airline flight attendants now have a flameproof bag available to use should there be a lithium battery fire on board. Googling “airline flame proof bag battery fire” yields the websites of several vendors of possible bags. I’m scheduled to fly a domestic trip with Delta for business travel in October and I’ll ask one of the flight attendants if they can show me the product they use.
I used to rib Tom M1EYP about things like this and now it’s biting me back. That’s the issue, not recharging, replacing, fixing the same day of the walk. Having got away with the battery, I fixed the iffy PalmPaddle cable the same evening. It was a cable I had made and the ground connection was intermittent. Cleaned up and re-soldered. Also the battery was given a few charge / discharge cycles, now I can pull 500mA for 70min continuous, the battery charger says about 700mA capacity.
